Our goal is to get everyone into a group, but only doing a group can feed into a self-centered agenda in the same way sitting in the back row and not engaging the mission is a bit of a selfish approach to church for a long-term Christian.
Groups can be about you, whereas serving is almost never about you.
I still think everyone should be in a group, but if group is all you do as a Christian, it can feed into the consumer frenzy that is North American culture.
If you need to improve your volunteer culture, I outlined seven questions volunteers ask but never say out loud in this post. I also devoted an entire chapter to creating a healthy volunteer culture in my latest book, Lasting Impact: 7 Powerful Conversations That Can Help Your Church Grow.
2. Provide a clear path toward involvement
The challenge for many people who participate in a congregation is that they don’t know what to do to get involved.
Church websites can be fuzzy about next steps. So can church leaders.
Often during services, we list 12 things people can do to get more engaged in their faith and in the mission.
Faced with too many choices, most people choose nothing.
The clearer and simpler the path is toward engagement, the more people will travel it.
At Connexus Church, where I serve, we reorganized our lobby a few years ago, ditching the ‘Welcome Desk” for two simple kiosks.
Now, we have a “New Here” kiosk for new guests. And we have a “Next Steps” kiosk with trained guest services people who act a bit like concierges who can help people discover which next step is best for them (baptism vs. serving vs. joining a group vs. Starting Point, etc.).
At every level, we try to take the confusion away and simply help people engage.
We also try to make our language from the front clear and direct.
3. Focus all programs around your mission
Years ago, we dumped a program-based model of church (if you can dream it, we’ll do it) for a much simpler model.
Why?
In part, we moved to a simpler model because when you give people too many choices, people choose nothing.
But we also changed it because we realized that what people are involved in becomes the mission.
So if you have lots of off-mission programs (like the Quilting Club or the Men Who Eat Bear Meat Fellowship), you will have a hard time focusing people on what you really want them to do.
They’re passionate about their ministries, but not the ministry.
And that’s the problem. Too many Christians get passionate about their mission, not THE mission.
If you want people to be passionate about the central mission of your church, only do programming that directly advances the central mission.
When you say ‘no’ to a hundred other missions, you say ‘yes’ to the most important mission.
